This invention relates to an electronic communications recording system and an associated method.
Electronic communications recording systems are known and are typically used for surveillance by intelligence services and law enforcement agencies and more particularly to intercept, monitor and electronically record data relating to communications events associated with target data or numbers on intercepted communication networks. A target number may be a telephone number, internet protocol (IP) address, URL etc. There is also a growing need for commercial communications recording systems in communications carrier networks and by service providers.
In general, the known systems are hardware centric, are therefore prone to becoming obsolete and not sufficiently scalable. The scalability is limited by the capacity of a time division multiplex (TDM) switching matrix forming part of these known systems. The TDM switching matrix serves to switch between a plurality of inputs for synchronous data which inputs are connected to the intercepted networks and a plurality of outputs for synchronous data. Furthermore, the input data is typically received in a first digital transmission format, such as E1, and the output data is also in that format. Each of the outputs is then connected to an input of a dedicated E1 data recorder connected between the respective output and a LAN. A system controller is also connected to the LAN. These known systems are generally intercepted network specific and cannot easily be adapted or integrated to accommodate a plurality of network technology types or carrier protocol types. The physical size, power and cooling requirements of the known systems also present serious capacity constraints.
In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in traffic on communications networks. The aforementioned known systems do not have the capacity to cope with all of the traffic and therefore only selective recording of some events associated with pre-identified target numbers is made. Such selective recording may not be satisfactory for many applications. More particularly, there is a need to search more comprehensively for intelligence and therefore more powerful and scalable products are required, that would enable recording of much more data than is presently practical and possible. For example, at present, monitoring systems are expected to cope with in excess of 30,000 data channels per city, as well as with emerging technologies, such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP).